Ancestry and culture most important

WASHINGTON (RNS) In the most comprehensive study of American Jews in 12 years, a strong majority said being Jewish is mostly about ancestry or culture, not the religious practice of Judaism.

"A Portrait of Jewish Americans," released Tuesday (Oct. 1) by the Pew Research Center, shows strong secularist trends most clearly seen in one finding: 62% of U.S. Jews said Jewishness is largely about culture or ancestry; just 15% said it's about religious belief.

"Non-Jews may be stunned by it," said Alan Cooperman, co-author of the study. "Being Jewish to most Jews in America today is not a matter of religion."

Considering practically all of the anti-Israel American (and other) Jews are secular, cultural Jews and that this group trends enormously liberal I am not sure there is anything lastingly positive here. I think we are seeing some fragmentation of the Jewish identity. They are not immune to modernity after all. Still, I was under the impression most nationalists already favoured an ancestral and cultural definition of Nation.

We've seen plenty of contemporary movements cast themselves as nationalists yet the essence of their message is exclusively anti-Other. Some of their members have actually argued anti-Otherness as the sole means of bolstering in-group identity yet no such thing has come to pass for them within the definition of nationalism. What happens instead of a revived ancestry and culture identity are little isolated defamation clubs with zero public credit.